Alpha Phonics

by Samuel L. Blumenfeld

The Blumont Company

This is one of my 100 Top Picks!

This is an update of the review in Top Picks. See the complete review in 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum for more details.

Alpha-Phonics provides straightforward phonics-based reading instruction in this single volume. It presents rules folowed by practice with syllables, words, and sentences. It first teaches "vowel-consanant"combinations such as "am" and "at." Then it adds beginning consonants to make words such as "Sam" and bat."

There's nothing fancy here; just solid instruction. Of course, you can (and probably should) add phonics bingo games, beginning readers, or other extras to make things more interesting. One particular extra that is very helpful is Alpha-Phonics/How to Tutor Workbook, which has fill-in-the-blank and writing activities to reinforce lessons in the Alpha Phonics book. (Order from www.alphaphonics.com or call 208-322-4440.)

While the basic program would seem tailored for Perfect Paulas or Competent Carls, the simplicity of it actually makes it a good foundational program for other learners since it is very easy to supplement with appropriate learning style activities for all students.

You might want to try the CD-ROM version of the program: Alpha-Phonics the Book on CD-ROM [$39.95-Available from www.alphaphonics.com or call 208-322-4440]. It contains the same instructional material as the book, but it is presented with sound on the computer screen. Students make responses using the mouse rather than the keyboard.

Alpha-Phonics was previously published by The Paradigm Company (www.alphaphonics.com), but the latest edition is published by The Blumont Company. In the new edition, content has been rearranged, and some improvements have been made to the lessons themselves.

One significant change I noticed was in lessons 98, 99 and 103. These lessons previously began by introducing "nonsense syllables" such as "ile, ive, ife," and "ipe." These have been replaced with actual words such as "file" and "dive." Nonsense syllable are still used elsewhere in the book, but their replacement in these instances is an improvement.

Another change that is a greater visual/appearance difference rather than something that affects learning is that the earlier edition used a simple, hand-drawn form of letters for all the lessons while the new book uses a standard font (likely Times New Roman). Both books present "a" and "g" in a type style form rather than a simpler, ball-and-stick style--neither is a model for manuscript printing.

Both books recommend teaching cursive in the early grades, but the new edition makes a stronger case for teaching cursive before manuscript printing.

The bottom line regarding these two editions of Alpha-Phonics is that although differences are minor, I think the improvements to the latest edition would make it my preferred choice.